Chapter Text
Keith Kogane had a problem. A serious problem. One that nothing in the universe could fix, no matter how hard he tried to find it.
That problem? His own goddamned, fucking useless feelings.
The object of said feelings? One Takashi ‘Shiro’ Shirogane. The man who found him right when he needed to be found, gave him every opportunity he needed to succeed, made him feel like he could make something of himself. Then, just when Keith thought things were going great, disappeared without a word to anyone, even Keith.
By that point, they had been in a steady relationship for five years. Five years of date nights, Netflix marathons on the shitty couch in their tiny apartment, Chinese take-out, and love. So much love, and laughter, and happiness that Keith felt like he could burst at times.
Until the day Keith came home from work to find Shiro’s shelves and hangers empty in the closet, his stuff cleaned out of the bathroom, and two words scrawled on a sticky note left on the fridge door.
I’m Sorry.
Keith had wondered for a long time after that day if he would ever get over his feelings for Shiro. It took a lot of time for him to stop crying, to stop searching for the older man who’d taken half his heart with him when he left around every corner, in every coffee shop, in every customer that walked into the mechanic shop he worked for. Keith had fallen so deep into the rabbit hole of depression that he didn’t think it would be possible to claw his way out of it most days.
But he did.
He packed up his stuff, and sold what he couldn’t carry with him, and moved back out to his Dad’s old desert shack outside of Phoenix, Arizona. He found work at the old chop shop where his parents had met years ago, before he was even a thought in their heads. He’d even gone on a few dates, not that those were much more than minor blips on the radar of his life.
No one else would ever compare to what he’d had with Shiro.
But Shiro was gone, and he’d moved back to his hometown, where his old man had raised him. Back to where there were so many other memories which seemed so much less painful now compared to the ones he’d left behind in Altea after Shiro had left.
He rescued a wolf dog mix a couple months into his return to Phoenix. Somebody had driven the half grown pup out into the desert and dumped him under a cactus five miles down the road from Keith’s shack.
Nursing Kosmo back to health had kept him sane, those first few weeks. He’d begun spiralling, eyeing all the sharp objects in the confines of his shack more times than he wanted to admit in a day.
It had been so hard to convince himself that life was still worth it, until he’d found Kosmo curled up under the shade of that cactus, waiting for the assholes who dumped him to come back for him.
Sure, Keith hadn’t realised at the time exactly how big Kosmo would grow, but it didn’t matter to him either way. Kosmo had needed Keith as much as he had needed the half-grown wolf dog. Now, he had a living, breathing compression blanket that always knew whenever he needed to go for a run, or a drive, or when he needed to be pressed into the couch cushions or the mattress of his bed until the pounding of his heart and rattling of his breathing evened out.
Kosmo gave him a routine, and helped him focus on something more than his anger and hurt, and the emptiness that Shiro had left behind.
It had been six months of having Kosmo in his life that managed to convince him that answering the missed calls and unread texts and emails from his friends back in Altea wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
None of them ever mentioned Shiro, after all. They just wanted to know how he was doing; if he was still alive, eating well, that sort of thing.
Kosmo reminded him that life goes on, whether he wanted it to or not.
He still wondered about Shiro sometimes, of course he did. He couldn’t help it, really. Shiro had been such a large part of his life and his happiness for the longest time, and he still believed he would never be the same person without Shiro in his life. The most important thing about his thoughts and memories though was that he’d finally forgiven himself, and Shiro too.
There had been a point where he had convinced himself that he was the only reason Shiro had left; that he had said or done one too many things that had been the reason their relationship had deteriorated as suddenly as it had. Then he’d blamed Shiro for walking out on him, instead of giving him an explanation. He still didn’t know why, but he’d stopped blaming himself, and eventually he’d stopped blaming Shiro too.
He'd been living out in the desert for three years by that point.
Now, after five years in the desert, and closing in on his twenty-seventh birthday, he was finally feeling like he belonged somewhere again. Lance, Allura and Acxa kept him updated on life in Altea since he’d left, and he’d reunited with his childhood friends Hunk and Pidge once he’d come out of his self-imposed isolation in the Arizona desert. Hunk and Pidge dragged him out of his shack more often than Kosmo did, taking man and dog both into town to wander the streets, the parks, and sit outside the front of Hunk’s family’s bakery in the cool shade, watching life pass them by at 35 miles per hour.
Life goes on, whether he wanted it to or not.
It was one such day, with Kosmo curled up under the chair he occupied next to his travel bowl half full of water, that Pidge groaned loud and long as they flopped into the chair opposite him, some glazed pastry or other from the bakery in their hands.
“Why is Arizona always so goddamn hot,” they complained on a sigh, grabbing for their glass of iced tea to press it against their forehead for a moment, before taking a few long gulps through the straw.
Keith raised an eyebrow at his friend.
“Because it’s in the middle of a desert? Y’know, one of those places with a lack of moisture and an abundance of sunlight?”
Pidge glared at him around a mouthful of sweet, flaky pastry.
“Fuck geography,” they grumbled, taking another drink from their glass. One corner of Keith’s mouth quirked upward, and he huffed a breath of laughter, before reaching for his black coffee to take a hearty draught of the scalding beverage. Pidge eyed him over the rim of their glass as if he’d grown a second head. He raised an eyebrow at them again.
Hunk stuck his head out from the air-conditioned interior of the bakery, grinning broadly at them.
“You guys want refills or anything?”
Keith shook his head, giving his friend a grateful smile. “No, I’m good. Thanks bro.”
“All good. You, Pidge?”
Pidge slumped to the tabletop chin first, sighing the world-weary sigh that they were infamous for, and looking rather like a kicked puppy. “I would murder for another one of your mum’s iced teas, Hunk.”
The gentle giant of a man nodded, smiling sympathetically at Pidge. “Got it, I’ll be right back,” then he was gone, back into the air-conditioned relief the bakery provided to customers wanting to escape from the heat. Keith breathed a quiet sigh of contentment as he sipped slowly at his coffee, reaching down to his side when Kosmo chuffed to card his fingers through the silky soft fur between the wolf dog’s ears. The heat was intense; he could feel it rising from every baked surface around him as much as he could feel the sweat rolling slow trails down the back of his neck from his hairline. He could feel the warm glare of the sun on his closed eyelids, feel the heaving of the furry body next to him under his hand, as Kosmo panted and lapped some more water from his bowl.
When Keith opened his eyes again, Hunk had rejoined them, dropping himself into the empty seat at their table, as he set a fresh iced tea in front of Pidge, who snatched it up immediately to begin sipping at it. Keith raised an eyebrow at his friend as they hunched down until their chin rested on the table, clutching the glass of iced tea in both hands like it was the only thing keeping them alive right then.
Keith felt the notion might not be all that impossible, given how much of a propensity Pidge had for comfortably cool, air-conditioned environments. Which is why Pidge only ever made appearances at Keith’s shack after dark. They refused to make an appearance during daylight hours until Keith installed an air conditioner. Which…Keith couldn’t really do since the shack was off the grid.
Keith tuned back into the conversation unfolding across the table in front of him when he could feel two pairs of eyes staring him down. He looked up from where he’d been rubbing one of Kosmo’s fluffy, black and grey ears to find Pidge and Hunk double-teaming him with their best attempt at kicked puppy expressions. He quirked an eyebrow at them, adopting the bland, unaffected expression he usually went for when his friends wanted him to do something they knew he would resist at any and all costs.
“What could you two possibly want me to do this time,” he queried, adding a little heat to his eyes as he appraised his friends, who went from looking like puppies to wearing identical shit eating grins.
“Oh, y’know,” Hunk began, leaning back in his seat and twining his fingers together over his belly. “Not a lot, really.”
“We just want you to come for a road trip,” Pidge continued, leaning their chin on one palm, elbow pressed against the sun warmed formica table top.
“Can I bring Kosmo?”
“What?! No, you can’t bring Kosmo!”
“Then there’s your answer,” Keith grunted, turning away from his friends and back to his dog. Pidge groaned a long, loud sound of unadulterated suffering, while Hunk sighed, reaching up to scrub a hand through his thick, black hair.
“Oh, come on Keith!” Pidge sat up straight, glaring at him over the rims of their glasses. “You’ve been back here for what? Five years now?” Keith grunted an acknowledgement of this fact, his fingers tightening around Kosmo’s leash, making the leather creak quietly as he did. “You haven’t been on a date in over a year! Let us do you a fucking favour, you hermit!”
Keith blinked as the balled-up paper wrapper from Pidge’s straw was flicked with deadly accuracy to bounce off of his forehead, smack between his eyebrows. Keith looked at his grouchy friend, both eyebrows raised now.
“I’m sorry, but since when is my lack of interest in dating any of your business?”
Pidge turned a remarkable shade of red at this. They shot out of their seat, palms meeting the tabletop with a loud smack. “Since you refuse to get over your fucking ex, you idiot!”
With that declaration, Pidge stormed away from the table to disappear into the air-conditioned interior of the bakery. Hunk winced, the hand in his hair rubbing over the back of his neck as he took in Keith’s stunned expression.
“We, uh…” Hunk sighed, steeled himself, and looked Keith in the eye as he spoke again. “We noticed a while ago, buddy. We don’t need to know the who, the why, or the how, we just – we want you to be happy. Like, the kind of happy we’ve never seen you be since you came back here. We understand that your ex is probably a very painful and touchy subject, but we’re just worried about you, Keith. Just – Just think about it, okay?”
Keith watched in silence as Hunk stood quietly, cleared away the empty glasses and Keith’s half drunk mug of coffee, and followed Pidge into the bakery.
Keith went offline after that. Legitimately. He did not remember getting up, gathering Kosmo’s water bowl and bottle, and walking up the street towards the dog park. He didn’t remember reaching the park, unhooking Kosmo’s leash, petting his ruff before letting the big wolf hound bound across the park to play with other neighbourhood pets. While the other dog owners cooed at Kosmo, and greeted him like an old friend they hadn’t seen in a while, Keith found a spot under the shade of a tree where he dropped down between some of the roots, his back hitting the bark with a gentle thud.
He didn’t remember sitting there for half the day, not thinking, not feeling the heat of the earth, or seeing the tree’s shadow lengthen as the sun crossed the sky.
He slowly came back to himself after Kosmo had greeted everyone at the park five times over, only to return to Keith and flop down on top of Keith’s legs, a panting shag pile of black and grey and white fur.
Keith breathed in, smelled the heat, the grass, the dirt, and the smell of freshly groomed dogs.
He breathed out, felt the air move back out of his lungs and into the atmosphere. Reached out to tunnel his fingers into Kosmo’s fur, felt the course outer coat and the soft, downy undercoat.
He blinked, raised his head, and looked around him.
The sun was going down, and the few stragglers still at the park were packing up, fixing to head home for the day. Keith sighed as he realised he’d be running the risk of walking back to his bike at the bakery in the dark if he didn’t get moving. He looked back down at Kosmo, who was looking at him with those deep, dark eyes, so full of questions Keith didn’t have the answers for.
He sighed, and gently shoved Kosmo off of his legs, clipped his leash back on, and headed for the gate to the rest of the park to make his way back to his bike so they could head home. He kept his head down, eyes fixed on the sidewalk, only half paying attention to the world around him.
Which is why it was such a surprise to him when his nose met firmly with someone’s chest. And then he was on his butt, blinking at the sidewalk.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. Are you okay?”
Keith froze at the sound of that voice. A ghost from his past come back to haunt him after the places his brain went earlier, surely?
He couldn’t breathe as he slowly looked up, and up, and up. He remembered those thick, muscular thighs, the trim waist, the broad, muscular chest and arms, or rather, arm, because he noted dazedly that one was now a metal prosthetic of some kind. His breath stuttered out of his chest like he’d been sucker punched as he looked past the square chin and jaw and those perfect, perfect lips, until blue eyes locked onto grey. He watched intently as those grey eyes went wide, so wide, and his name left those lips on a quiet breath, like a prayer, or a benediction.
“Keith?”
Keith Kogane had a problem. A serious problem. One that nothing in the universe could fix, no matter how hard he tried to find it.
That problem? His own goddamned, fucking useless feelings.
The object of said feelings? One Takashi ‘Shiro’ Shirogane. The man who disappeared from his life five years ago.
The man who was now standing in front of him, looking as shell-shocked as Keith felt.
Fuck feelings.